Brazil's Federal Court of Accounts
Insight and Foresight for Better Governance
Brazil’s Federal Court of Accounts, the Tribunal de Contas da União (TCU), is seeking to go beyond its traditional oversight role and help improve policy formulation, implementation and evaluation. This report identifies ways TCU can achieve this by applying principles of good governance to areas such policy coherence, strategic and long-term budgeting, internal control and risk management, and monitoring and evaluation. It suggests concrete steps TCU can take to adapt its own strategies, approaches and audit programming to provide valuable insight and foresight to policy makers in the centre of government. In this way, it can help ensure that policies and programmes are forward looking and based on evidence.
Executive summary
Supreme audit institutions (SAIs) have a unique mandate in government for ensuring that policies are well-informed, coherent and forward-looking. In the last decades, many SAIs have embraced a role that goes beyond traditional oversight and holding governments accountable for public expenditures. These SAIs have become critical purveyors of insight and foresight for policy makers through new approaches to audits and advisory work. Their evolution reflects a drive towards more informed policy making, particularly within the Centre of Government (CoG), as well as evidence-based programme delivery to ensure citizens’ needs are met.